Walt Disney's health had been deteriorating for many months before he
finally agreed to enter St. Joseph hospital in California on November 2,
1966, for tests concerning the pain in his leg and neck. Doctors discovered
a walnut-sized spot on the x-ray of his left lung and advised immediate
surgery.

Disney left the hospital to attend to studio business for a few days,
then re-entered St. Joseph on Sunday, November 6, for surgery the next day.
During Monday morning's operation, doctors found his left lung to be
cancerous and removed it. His oversized lymph nodes were an indication that
Disney hadn't much longer to live.

After two weeks of post-operative care, Disney was released from the
hospital. He crossed the street to his studios and spent another ten days
tending to studio business and visiting relatives before he grew too weak
and had to return to St. Joseph on November 30. His health started to
fail even more rapidly than expected, and drugs and cobalt treatments sapped
what little strength he had left. Walt Disney died two weeks later when his
circulatory system collapsed on the morning of December 15, 1966.

In the decades since Walt Disney's death, the claim that he arranged for his
body to be frozen has become ubiquitous. Nearly everyone familiar with the
name 'Walt Disney' has heard the story that Disney's corpse is stored in a
deep-freeze chamber somewhere -- directly under Disneyland's "Pirates of the
Caribbean" attraction is the most frequently mentioned site -- awaiting the day
when science can repair the damage to his body and bring 'Uncle Walt' back to life.

Was Walt Disney aware of the possibilities of life extension
through cryogenics? He certainly could have been aware of the progress
being made in cryogenics research. Numerous articles and books on hypothermia
and the preservation of animal tissue through freezing appeared in both the
scientific/medical and general press in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
Anyone with an interest in the subject could easily have located this
reading material, and even someone without a particular interest in the
subject may have run across one or more articles on the topic in the general
press.

The subject of cryonics was further brought to the public's attention
with the publication in 1964 of Robert C.W. Ettinger's book, The Prospect
of Immortality. Ettinger's book, drawing on much of the available
literature about cryonics, covered the practical, legal, ethical, and moral
impact of freezing and reviving human beings. Ettinger, while admitting
that science had as yet no way of reviving frozen human beings, was
unflaggingly optimistic that a viable means of reanimation would eventually
be found, telling his readers:

The fact: At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve
dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely.

The assumption: If civilization endures, medical science should
eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body,
including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.

Hence we need only arrange to have our bodies, after we die, stored in
suitable freezers against the time when science may be able to help us. No
matter what kills us, whether old age or disease, and even if freezing
techniques are still crude when we die, sooner or later our friends of the
future should be equal to the task of reviving and curing us.

Given the prevalence of articles published about cryonics in the mid
1960's, and the relative popularity of Ettinger's book among science buffs
(even if few of them had actually read it), it is certainly possible that
Walt Disney was aware of the potentiality of cryonic storage of humans.

Whatever the possibilities, however, there is no documentary evidence
to suggest that Walt Disney was interested in, or had even heard of,
cryonics. Documentation of Disney's alleged fascination with preserving or
extending his life through cryonics did not appear until decades after his
death, and what little information is available has predominantly been provided
by some extremely questionable sources.

Claims about Disney's interest come primarily from two of the more recent
Disney biographies: Robert Mosley's 1986 effort,Disney's World, and Marc
Eliot's 1993 entry, Walt Disney -- Hollywood's Dark Prince. Both books
have been largely discredited for containing numerous factual errors and
undocumented assertions, rendering them rather untrustworthy as sources
of reliable background material.

Eliot's biography, which dwells unrelentingly on every salacious incident
and rumor connected with Walt Disney's name, is fairly easy to dismiss.
Charitably described as "speculative," it contains a single passage
concerning Walt Disney's alleged interest in cryonics:

Disney's growing preoccupation with his own mortality also led him to
explore the science of cryogenics, the freezing of an aging or ill person until
such time as the human body can be revived and restored to health. Disney
often mused to Roy about the notion of perhaps having himself frozen, an idea
which received . . . indulgent nods from his brother . . .

Not surprisingly, the source behind this piece of information is nowhere
to be found in Eliot's notes. And as there is no record of Roy ever having
spoken of his brother's alleged interest in cryonics, Eliot's "source" was
likely nothing more than repetition of rumor.

Mosley's Disney's World is also rather long on rumor and short on
facts. The book has been described as "poorly researched and filled with
inaccuracies", a biography that seemed "to promote certain preset points of
view, regardless of evidence". The same critique goes on to say, "One of its
central themes, for example, is Disney's fascination with cryogenesis and
the strong suggestion that his body was frozen following his death. It
makes for titillating reading; however, few facts support Mosley's claims".

Disney's World
paints a picture of an anxious Walt Disney desperately
searching for a way to spring back to life in order to prevent or correct
the horrible mistakes his followers were bound to make in turning his EPCOT
dream into reality:

[T]he chief problem that troubled Walt was the length of time it might take
the doctors to perfect the process. How long would it be before the surgical
experts could bring a treated cadaver back to working life? To be brutally
practical, could it be guaranteed, in fact, that he could be brought back in
time to rectify the mistakes his successors would almost certainly start
making at EPCOT the moment he was dead?

Mosley's book is filled with repetitions of the claim that Walt Disney
grew increasingly interested in cryonics as his health waned in late 1966,
such as this paragraph:

It was about this time that Walt Disney became acquainted
with the experiments into the process known as cryogenesis, or what one
newspaper termed "the freeze-drying of the human cadaver after death, for
eventual resuscitation."

Mosley's statements regarding Disney's belief in the feasibility of
cryonics are somewhat difficult to take seriously, given that his book
includes such ludicrously erroneous (or fabricated) statements as:

The surgeons had taken away his diseased lung to examine it, and then
were going to preserve it. Walt was pleased when he heard that. He knew
enough about cryogenesis by now to be aware that it was important to hold
onto all the organs -- just in case the surgeons needed to treat them before
putting them back where they belonged.

(Samples of tissue removed during cancer surgery are preserved in
formaldehyde, a method of "preservation" which, while useful for microscopy
studies, damages the tissue biologically. Organs removed from Disney by
his surgeons could never be "put back where they belonged", no matter what
the treatment.)

Mosley provides no source for his statements, other than to assert
that Disney's "closest colleagues and advisers" were "confident" that Walt
Disney "eventually became convinced of cryogenesis as a viable medical
process and was persuaded that, even in 1966, it was possible for a human
being to have himself brought back to life after death". In fact, these
"close colleagues" of Disney's turned out to be a few employees on the
periphery of the Disney organization who had never spoken to Walt about
cryonics, and were merely repeating the same decades-old rumor for Mosley's
benefit. On the other hand, someone much closer to Walt Disney, his
daughter, Diane wrote in 1972:

There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that my father, Walt Disney, wished to be frozen. I doubt that my father had ever heard of cryonics.

Despite the persistent rumors, available documentation indicates that
Walt Disney was in fact cremated. Although Disney's preferences regarding the
disposal of his body are not public record (instructions or provisions for
his funeral and burial were not included in his will), other
publicly-available material is entirely consistent with the claim that he was
cremated:

Walt Disney publicly stated -- ten years before his death -- that he wished not to have a funeral.

Disney family members have confirmed that cremation was Walt's wish.

Disney'sdeath certificate shows that he was cremated two days after
his death. (The name, license number, and signature of the enbalmer
appearing on the death certificate are those of a real enbalmer
who was employed at the Forest Lawn mortuary at the time.)

A marked burial plot, for Walt Disney (and his son-in-law) can be found
at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale (the logical resting
grounds for someone whose cremation was handled by Forest Lawn's
mortuary), and court papers indicate that the Disney estate paid
$40,000 to Forest Lawn for interment property.

Since Disney's demise, several unmremarkable events and circumstances
surrounding his life and death have been combined to try to establish
a pattern of mystery and secrecy concerning the disposal of his body. All of
these events, however, have straightforward, non-mysterious explanations:

"Disney had a long preoccupation with death"

"Disney had a neurotic fear of death"

Statements concerning Disney's alleged preoccupation with death are
generally attempts to sensationalize the topic by distorting the facts.
Although he did worry about dying prematurely, Disney was not "obsessed with
death". Having been told by a fortune-teller that he would die when he was
thirty-five, Disney did brood about his inevitable demise during occasional
bouts of depression, even after he had long passed the allegedly fatal age.
Contemplating one's mortality is not an unusual behavior, and there is no
evidence that Walt Disney did so to an excessive degree.

William Poundstone quotes some ridiculous passages from Anthony
Haden-Guest's The Paradise Program
to try to establish Disney's preoccupation with death, detailing a "gruesome seven-minute Mickey Mouse
cartoon" made in 1933 in which "a mad scientist tries to cut off Pluto's
head and put in on a chicken. The cartoon in question is The Mad Doctor,
which was nothing more than humorous spoof of 1930's horror films.
Even in the cartoon itself the "horrific" events are not portrayed as real:
the whole episode turns out to be nothing more than a nightmare of Mickey's.
Although Poundstone wrote that the film was pulled from the Rank film
library in 1970, it has been readily available in the Mickey Mouse: The
Black and White Years laserdisc set since 1994.

"The news of Disney's death was deliberately delayed."

This claim that the announcement of Walt Disney's death was deliberately
withheld from the press for several hours has been made most persistently,
presumably because Disney's aides would have needed time to furtively whisk
his body away from the hospital to the secret cryogenic chamber before the
presence of reporters made the task impossible to accomplish in privacy.
Leonard Mosley's description of the event features some of more absurd
stretches of truth made in this regard:

And this is where the mystery begins. It was Walt himself who had asked
Roy Disney to keep his illness secret, but the manner in which the world was
apprised of his death remains surprising.

In fact, it was not until hours after he was declared dead that an
announcement was made. First came radio announcements, then a curt official
notice informed the press and public that Walt Disney was no more. It added
that there would be no funeral. He had already been cremated, the
announcement said, and his ashes interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park
in Glendale, California. Only immediate family members had been present.

It is true that Disney's death was not officially announced to the press until several hours
after it occurred at 9:30 AM on Thursday, December 15, 1966, but the reasons
behind the delay were perfectly ordinary ones. First of all, Disney's death would not have been announced immediately
under any circumstances. Several family members had to be notified before a public announcement could be made, and Disney studio executives had to be
located and informed that the head of their organization had passed away
before the information would be released to the press. Additionally, the
gravity of Disney's illness had largely been kept a secret from the press,
so there were no hordes of reporters crowding the hallways of St.
Joseph Hospital, waiting for the inevitable announcement of his death.
The reason for Disney's original hospitalization had been announced to the
press as "treatment of an old neck injury received while playing polo,"
and when Disney re-entered the hospital for the final time two weeks before his
death, the statement made to the press was that Disney was undergoing "a
routine post-operative" checkup. Although it was certainly no secret that
Disney was quite ill, the seriousness of his condition was not generally
known. The extent to which the details of Walt Disney's illness were kept
from the press are evidenced by the newspapers reports of his death,
which stated that his left lung had been removed during an operation on
November 21 (an error which Poundstone repeats in Big Secrets). That operation
had actually taken place two weeks earlier; November 21 was the date of his
original post-surgery release from the hospital.

So, given that relatives and studio heads had to be notified before any
statements about Disney's death were made to the press; that the media were
not on a "Disney death watch," busily preparing obituaries and tributes; and
that communications in 1966 were certainly slower than they are today, it is
not at all surprising that official news of Disney's death did not reach the
public until a few hours later.

Mosley's other statements, about Disney's funeral and cremation, are just
further examples of sloppy research on his part. Disney was not cremated
until two days after his death; no press announcement made "hours after he
was declared dead" claimed that he had already been cremated.

Official statements released to the press after Disney's surgery (and
before his death) had already revealed that a tumor had been found,
necessitating the removal of a lung. Whether stated "officially" or not, it
was quite clear to the public that Disney had died of lung cancer. In any
case, what possible difference could it have made what Walt Disney died
of? How could dissembling about the "real" cause of his death possibly have
facilitated the goal of secretly storing his body in a cryonic chamber?

"Disney's funeral services were held in secret."

Disney's funeral was in fact conducted quickly and quietly -- at the Little
Church of the Flowers in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale -- at 5:00 PM on
Friday, December 16 (the day after his death). No announcement of the
funeral was made until after it had taken place, no associates or executives
from Disney Studios were invited, and only immediate family members were in
attendance. Forest Lawn officials refused to disclose any details of the
funeral or disposition of the body, stating only that "Mr. Disney's wishes
were very specific and had been spelled out in great detail.".

None of this secrecy surrounding Disney's funeral should be the least bit
surprising to anyone, however. In the biography The Story of Walt Disney,
written a decade before Disney's death, his daughter Diane had noted:

He never goes to a funeral if he can help it. If he had to go to one it
plunges him into a reverie which lasts for hours after he's home. At such
times he says, 'When I'm dead I don't want a funeral. I want people to
remember me alive.'"

Is it so remarkable that a man who had an aversion to funerals -- and who
had stated a ten years earlier that he didn't want a public funeral -- was
sent off with a very quick and very private ceremony? If the
clandestineness of the funeral had been intended to cover up the fact that
Disney's body had already been deposited in liquid nitrogen at a secret
facility, there were certainly better, less obvious ways of accomplishing the
deception: Disney could have been given a simple closed-casket ceremony, with
nobody the wiser.

"Disney specified the public was never to be told the location of his grave."

Again, this claim is not the least bit extraordinary. It is true that
officials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park will not divulge the location of the
Disney family plot. Many celebrities do request that the locations
of their burial plots not be given out to visitors as a simple matter of
privacy. The burial sites are not intended to be "secret," however; if they
were, they wouldn't be marked and located on publicly-accessible grounds.
Disney's plot was not, as Mosley claimed, "already filled with family ashes
from which the public would always be barred." Disney's plot is far from
obtrusive, but it is located in an unrestricted part of the park and marked
with a plaque identifying its occupants; anyone who so desires is perfectly
free to visit, leave flowers, take photographs, etc. The plot was
certainly not "already filled with family ashes" at the time of Disney's
interment; even today it holds the remains of only one other person: Ron Brown,
a son-in-law who died the year after Disney. In fact, according to the book
Wills of the Rich and Famous, the interment property was not even chosen
until September 19, 1967, making it rather difficult to believe that it
could have been "already filled with family ashes."

If Disney was not really frozen, then how and when did this rumor originate?
The exact origins of the rumor are unknown, but at least one Disney publicist
has suggested that the story was started by a group of Disney Studio animators
who "had a bizarre sense of humor." The earliest known printed version of the
rumor appeared in the magazine Ici Paris in 1969.

Even if the origins of the story are unknown, it is certainly easy to see
why the rumor is so believable. In the years immediately preceding his death,
Disney was involved in a number of projects which cemented his image as a
technical innovator in the public's mind. Disneyland attractions such as the
monorail, the House of the Future, the Voyage to the Moon; the
introduction of audio-animatronic figures at the 1964 World's Fair, and
Disney's plans for his "community of tomorrow" (EPCOT) in Florida made it easy
to believe Walt Disney was ahead of everyone else in his planning, even
when it came to his death. When you consider that the first cryonic suspension took
place just a month after Disney's death (Dr. James Bedford, a 73-year-old
psychologist from Glendale, was suspended on January 12, 1967), it's not so
far-fetched to imagine that Disney might have made similar arrangements.